Ronald H. Coase, a British-born University of Chicago law professor who in 1991 won the Nobel Prize in economics, produced a slender but influential body of work that advocated the application of economic tools to legal analysis. Mr. Coase, 102, died of heart failure Monday, Sept. 2, at St. Joseph Hospital in Chicago, said his caregiver, Rosie Olchefski. He had been in the hospital since late July and had suffered from pneumonia, she said. He was a...

Ronald H. Coase, a British-born University of Chicago law professor who in 1991 won the Nobel Prize in economics, produced a slender but influential body of work that advocated the application of economic tools to legal analysis. Mr. Coase, 102, died of heart failure Monday, Sept. 2, at St. Joseph Hospital in Chicago, said his caregiver, Rosie Olchefski. He had been in the hospital since late July and had suffered from pneumonia, she said. He was a...

It's hard to imagine, but after spending three years and up to $35,000 being tutored by some of the most brilliant minds in the nation, students often graduate from law school lacking the single, most important ability they will need to become a lawyer. They can`t pass the bar exam. For three years, students go through law school learning by the Socratic method that there are many questions but few answers. Increasingly, they are taking such courses as Law and Economics...

MEXICO CITY, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Mexican President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto's Cabinet is likely to contain a mix of technocrats and career politicians. Here are some of the people expected to form the backbone of his government: LUIS VIDEGARAY Videgaray, Pena Nieto's right-hand man, combines blue-chip academic qualifications with experience in the private sector, local government and Congress and is seen as a likely pick for finance minister. He...

The expulsions of a pregnant student and her boyfriend from a Chinese university have touched off a rare public debate about sexual morality. The two were expelled in October after a school doctor found the 19-year-old woman was pregnant, according to numerous reports in state media. The reports did not release the names of the couple or their school in Chongqing, central China's largest city and home to many colleges and universities. The doctor reported the pregnancy to school...

"Freakonomics," by "rogue economist" Steven Levitt, has been a best-seller, but these days world attention is focused on Obamanomics. Oddly -- or perhaps perfectly -- enough, both economic world views originate from the University of Chicago. As battles rage about the stimulus package and the world longs for a new New Deal, the Magazine steps back to consider the origins of Obamanomics, and how Obama's time on the University of Chicago Law School faculty informed it. In this week's cover story, "Ivory...

By Reviewed by Stephen B. Presser, Professor of legal history at Northwestern University and author of "Recapturing the Constitution" | April 23, 1995

Overcoming Law By Richard A. Posner Harvard University Press, 597 pages, $39.95 I read Richard Posner for the same reason I watch Jean-Claude Van Damme movies: Van Damme is Hollywood's current king of the martial arts, Posner is the legal academy's champion of the scholarly put-down, and in both cases you get to see the master of a discipline pulverize his foes. Posner, now a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit and formerly a law professor at the University of...

Hundreds of lawyers in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and around the world have been demonstrating in support of their brethren in Pakistan who were detained by police for protesting the suspension of that country's constitution early this month. Pakistan's woes have especially touched Bilal Zaheer, a 26-year-old associate lawyer at Chicago law firm Jenner & Block. His uncle was one of more than 2,000 lawyers, human-rights activists and political foes of Pakistan's president, Pervez...

Former University of Chicago economist Aaron Director was one of the founders of law and economics, a small field with large implications for the conduct of business and the protection of consumers. Through "the relentless application of basic principles of microeconomics," he upended conventional wisdom on antitrust policy and oriented it along free-market lines, said William Landes, a professor at the U. of C. Law School. Mr. Director's ideas took root not so much in books as in proteges.

Former University of Chicago economist Aaron Director was one of the founders of law and economics, a small field with large implications for the conduct of business and the protection of consumers. Through "the relentless application of basic principles of microeconomics," he upended conventional wisdom on antitrust policy and oriented it along free-market lines, said William Landes, a professor at the U. of C. Law School. Mr. Director's ideas took root not so much in books as in proteges.

"Freakonomics," by "rogue economist" Steven Levitt, has been a best-seller, but these days world attention is focused on Obamanomics. Oddly -- or perhaps perfectly -- enough, both economic world views originate from the University of Chicago. As battles rage about the stimulus package and the world longs for a new New Deal, the Magazine steps back to consider the origins of Obamanomics, and how Obama's time on the University of Chicago Law School faculty informed it. In this week's cover story, "Ivory...

The expulsions of a pregnant student and her boyfriend from a Chinese university have touched off a rare public debate about sexual morality. The two were expelled in October after a school doctor found the 19-year-old woman was pregnant, according to numerous reports in state media. The reports did not release the names of the couple or their school in Chongqing, central China's largest city and home to many colleges and universities. The doctor reported the pregnancy to school...

After three marathon days of teaching each week, University of Chicago law professor Dennis Hutchinson leaves his Hinsdale home on Thursday mornings to fly to Baltimore-Washington International Airport. He rents a car and drives to northern Virginia to spend the next three days with his wife and their three children. On Sundays, he returns to Hinsdale. While expensive and exhausting, it's the best way Hutchinson and his wife, Diane Wood, have...

Renaissance man. Johnny Appleseed. Workaholic. Brilliant. The sobriquets for Judge Richard Posner, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago, cover quite a bit of territory, nearly as much as the more than two dozen books, more than 1,500 legal opinions and hundreds of articles he has written. His writings and views cover a wide variety of topics, including sex, the impeachment of President Clinton (in which he poked fun at Supreme Court Chief Justice William...

By Reviewed by Stephen B. Presser, Professor of Law at Northwestern University and senior author of ``Law and Jurisprudence in American History`` | September 16, 1990

Problems of Jurisprudence By Richard A. Posner Harvard, 485 pages, $29.95 The story is told of John Maynard Keynes, the brilliant economist and father of the modern welfare state, that, using his superior understanding of finance, he casually made fortunes in the stock market for himself and for Trinity College, Cambridge. Keynes initially seems a fit person with whom to compare Richard Posner, now a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit,...

By Reviewed by Stephen B. Presser, Professor of legal history at Northwestern University and author of "Recapturing the Constitution" | April 23, 1995

Overcoming Law By Richard A. Posner Harvard University Press, 597 pages, $39.95 I read Richard Posner for the same reason I watch Jean-Claude Van Damme movies: Van Damme is Hollywood's current king of the martial arts, Posner is the legal academy's champion of the scholarly put-down, and in both cases you get to see the master of a discipline pulverize his foes. Posner, now a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit and formerly a law professor at the University of...

MEXICO CITY, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Mexican President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto's Cabinet is likely to contain a mix of technocrats and career politicians. Here are some of the people expected to form the backbone of his government: LUIS VIDEGARAY Videgaray, Pena Nieto's right-hand man, combines blue-chip academic qualifications with experience in the private sector, local government and Congress and is seen as a likely pick for finance minister. He...

After three marathon days of teaching each week, University of Chicago law professor Dennis Hutchinson leaves his Hinsdale home on Thursday mornings to fly to Baltimore-Washington International Airport. He rents a car and drives to northern Virginia to spend the next three days with his wife and their three children. On Sundays, he returns to Hinsdale. While expensive and exhausting, it's the best way Hutchinson and his wife, Diane Wood, have...

Hundreds of lawyers in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and around the world have been demonstrating in support of their brethren in Pakistan who were detained by police for protesting the suspension of that country's constitution early this month. Pakistan's woes have especially touched Bilal Zaheer, a 26-year-old associate lawyer at Chicago law firm Jenner & Block. His uncle was one of more than 2,000 lawyers, human-rights activists and political foes of Pakistan's president, Pervez...

Forget "Rueffian economics," the latest half-baked prescription to emanate from a rootless Washington think tank and an ambitious businessman. For 100 years, real economics around the world has been driven by a trio of university departments. As George Will put it the other day, only half in jest, "The Cold War is over and the University of Chicago won." Between 1890 and 1940 it was Cambridge, England, that dominated the top of this pyramid, with Alfred...